RangerOne, thanks for all the work on TVandMoviesNow.com. Is there any way to add searching by genre? That would make it even better. Thanks.

If you click "More Search Options" there's a Genre filter, giving you the choices of All, Action, Animation, Children, Classic, Comedy, Culture, Documentary, Drama, Gay, Horror, Music, Musicals, Mystery, News, Other, Romance, Sci-Fi, Sports, Thrillers, TV or Westerns. (Don't ask me what "Other" is or why there's a need for a TV genre). Personally I wish it was a checklist instead of a group of radio buttons; if you click "All", it would check all of them and when you search it will show you everything matching all of the genres checked, so I could say that I want to see a list of Sci-Fi, Drama, Thriller and Action titles.

If you click "More Search Options" there's a Genre filter, giving you the choices of All, Action, Animation, Children, Classic, Comedy, Culture, Documentary, Drama, Gay, Horror, Music, Musicals, Mystery, News, Other, Romance, Sci-Fi, Sports, Thrillers, TV or Westerns. (Don't ask me what "Other" is or why there's a need for a TV genre). Personally I wish it was a checklist instead of a group of radio buttons; if you click "All", it would check all of them and when you search it will show you everything matching all of the genres checked, so I could say that I want to see a list of Sci-Fi, Drama, Thriller and Action titles.

Thanks. I did a search choosing "Horror" and "Movies" and it didn't seem to filter out much of the non-applicable movies. I guess I'll just stick with Instantwatcher.com for genre searching.

Right now, foreign films are listed under "Culture". I can break it out into a separate category in one of the future updates.

I don't think so. Netflix lists 1477 titles in the Foreign genre at their site; if I use your "Culture" filter (which Netflix doesn't list on their site AFAICT), I get 350 titles and some of them are US films with only "Faith & Spirituality" as genres. In fact, I can't really tell what the titles in your "Culture" genre have in common, except that they all seem to be in either the "Foreign Movies", "Independent Movies" or "Faith & Spirituality" genres.

I don't think so. Netflix lists 1477 titles in the Foreign genre at their site; if I use your "Culture" filter (which Netflix doesn't list on their site AFAICT), I get 350 titles and some of them are US films with only "Faith & Spirituality" as genres. In fact, I can't really tell what the titles in your "Culture" genre have in common, except that they all seem to be in either the "Foreign Movies", "Independent Movies" or "Faith & Spirituality" genres.

A few things are going on here:
Netflix has a primary genre for a title and then several sub genres.
TVandMoviesNow is only using the primary genre. The web page you are using on Netflix is showing a title even if it's considered a documentary first and a foreign film second.
I also rolled up several of the Netflix genres. This was to keep the list to a manageable size. It was also to have the ability to search across a common set of genres across both Amazon and Netflix.

A few things are going on here:
Netflix has a primary genre for a title and then several sub genres.
TVandMoviesNow is only using the primary genre. The web page you are using on Netflix is showing a title even if it's considered a documentary first and a foreign film second.
I also rolled up several of the Netflix genres. This was to keep the list to a manageable size. It was also to have the ability to search across a common set of genres across both Amazon and Netflix.

However you generate it, the "Culture" genre doesn't produce a very useful collection of titles. It's three very small subsets of three genres, mashed together.

If it's any consolation, InstantWatcher only catches half as many titles for its "Foreign" genre as Netflix lists.

To handle the large number of genres, maybe you could use pull-down menu of some sort instead of radio buttons? You should at least offer the list of genres at Netflix' site:

Action & Adventure

Anime

Children & Family

Classics

Comedies

Documentaries

Dramas

Faith and Spirituality

Foreign

Gay & Lesbian

Horror

Independent

Music

Musicals

Romance

Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Special Interest

Sports

TV Shows

Thrillers

(I removed "HD", since you have a genre-independent filter for that already, as you should ). Some of those, of course, have many subgenres.

What I find really annoying that Amazon only allows you to see 12 titles on a page. So if I want to go thru the 2000 foreign films it is hundreds and hundreds of pages...

I guess what Amazon really cares about is that you spend more time on the website so they can keep showing you things you can buy from them.

Also, let's say you are willing to go through 200 pages of foreign films. Amazon does not allow you to skip pages. There is no easy way to get to page 50 or page 100 or 150....So unless you leave that browser window open, you start from page 1 every time. It really pi$$es me off...

What I find really annoying that Amazon only allows you to see 12 titles on a page. So if I want to go thru the 2000 foreign films it is hundreds and hundreds of pages...

I guess what Amazon really cares about is that you spend more time on the website so they can keep showing you things you can buy from them.

Also, let's say you are willing to go through 200 pages of foreign films. Amazon does not allow you to skip pages. There is no easy way to get to page 50 or page 100 or 150....So unless you leave that browser window open, you start from page 1 every time. It really pi$$es me off...

Well, they only have 123 Prime Instant Videos in the "Foreign" genre right now, but it is true that they'll only show you 12 at a time in panels and you can only go forward by a page at a time using a control that you have to scroll to the bottom of the page to find. TV&MN can only show you 10 at a time in panels, but you can go forward 4 page at a time and instantly to the first and last pages with controls at both the top and bottom of the page (these are suggestions that I recall making during development, if I say so myself ).

I forget the reason why there're are only 10 titles displayed at a time--I think that it had something to do with the API for Amazon?

Amazon does not allow you to skip pages. There is no easy way to get to page 50 or page 100 or 150....So unless you leave that browser window open, you start from page 1 every time. It really pi$$es me off...

Workaround: if you click on anything after page 1, near the end of the address bar URL there is a "page=" value you can change.

Well, they only have 123 Prime Instant Videos in the "Foreign" genre right now

I am looking at Amazon Instant Video, not Prime. Amazon has 2337 foreign movie titles available. I actually think it is a terrific list and have found many that I am interested in watching. I just wish there was an easy way to browse it....

It's too been too long! I just finished shutting down http://www.tvandmoviesnow.com/ Yep, I'm sad that I had to shut it down. As you probably know, Netflix turned off access to their public API a short time ago. Without that data, there's not much of a point to continuing the site. Regardless, it was fun while it lasted. I'd like to take the opportunity to thank everyone here on the forum for their support. A special thanks to MichaelTScott for all of his help and hours of testing and feedback. Hope you enjoyed the site. Happy streaming!

Thanks for all of your work Gabe. It's a shame to see it go, but at least there are a few more choice for the information than there were back when you started the site. I heard that 5 sites will continue to have access to that Netflix API; I didn't hear which they were, but I assume that InstantWatcher is among them since it continues to display information on new additions.

Again, thank you and I hope that you're successful in your other endeavors. Be well!